Sanity is Just Around the Corner

First, let me apologize for missing my post last week. It was a strange week that included many calls to various doctors and many visiting professionals coming into our home, all of which had to be coordinated by me. In addition, my family is facing some interesting financial changes which were in the midst of being investigated. And then we had some relatives who are high up on our favorites list suddenly go from “maybe we might be able to come down on one of these three weekends” to “we’ll be there in about four hours”.

Now the medical things are settling down, the financial decisions are made, and the family had a nice visit and have returned home. It’s time to breathe, and then get back into the “normal” crazy swirl of my life. I’ve got school lessons to catch up on and a blog to write, among other things.

In January I read 9 books, for a total of 1491 pages. I’m still working on making the chairs for my miniature book shop. They’re going rather slowly partly because the embroidery on the seats is painful for my wrist, and partly because the idea of making nine chairs is rather daunting. I think I’m going to finish just the ones for the downstairs, and let my mom finish the ones for the upstairs, since she’s supposed to be doing the upstairs anyway.

I’m doing well in my online classes, and learning a lot. So far I’ve gotten 100% on all my after-lesson quizzes. However, the only thing that actually counts toward my grade is the final exam, and even then, it’s a Pass/Fail class. You either get the certificate or not. Not that grades matter right now anyway, I’m after knowledge rather than grades.

During the last two weeks, I bought something I’ve been wanting for a long time, and finally was able to get: the complete series of MacGyver on DVD. It’s still as good as it has always been, and I’ve been really enjoying revisiting the world where most things can be cured with duct tape and a Swiss Army knife.

 

~Marie

Life and my Chairs

It’s been a crazy week in the Jenner household. It’s been so crazy, in fact, that instead of writing my post on Friday, I’m writing it on Monday to post tomorrow.

First, my father had an appointment with his primary care doctor January 11th. This week we discovered that almost all of the referrals and prescriptions my father’s doctor said she would write for him have not been written. They told me they were waiting on the insurance to approve them, but then, they told his case manager the same thing…and he’s the person that does the approving. He has an urgent need to be seen at a wound clinic, and other somewhat urgent needs, and they are not being met. In fact, there has apparently been no attempt to meet them. I get to spend tomorrow at the doctor’s office staging a one-woman sit-in until they hand me the three prescriptions (one for blood work, two for equipment) that he needs. I will then get to run all over town hand-delivering them. Grrr!

Second, the weather all week has been cold and wet. The wet is good for the desert environment I live in, I know I’ll be drinking all this rain this summer when the temps top 100. On the other hand, cold and damp is not good for my arthritis. I’ve spent a good amount of time holed up with my electric blanket and a good book.

I recently got an email from my library, telling me about free classes I can take online. The library gives me authorization numbers, and I pay nothing. I’ve signed up for classes in InDesign and Dreamweaver, in the hope that I can improve my book interiors and ebooks (with InDesign) and my website (with Dreamweaver). I’m learning a lot, but reading the lecture, doing the follow-along practice, then completing the assignments for both classes takes large chunks out of my week.

I’m still working on edits of The Castle Project and Just a Name. I expect to get Mind Touch back from the readers in about a week, and then I can start on those final edits. I’m also doing research on a new book for the Kwennjurat series, tentatively titled The Queen is in her Counting House.

On the miniature front, I’ve replaced the round chair parts with square ones to give me more surface area for gluing. I’ve also replaced low-temp hot glue with high temp, after actually reading the directions and discovering that low temp is for paper and delicate things, and high temp is for wood and metal. I didn’t realize there was a difference in the glue or its performance; I just thought low temp was a safety measure for the fingers of klutzy people who were tired of wearing hot-glue blisters. I made one chair, painted it, and wove the seat, but when I looked at the finished project, it looked a lot shorter and squattier than I wanted. I measured and did some math and realized that if it were blown up to full size, the seat would be 30” square. That’s really huge. Most chairs of this sort have a seat 18” square. So I cut smaller pieces and made a second one. You can see the difference in the two seats. The soda can is there for scale, not because I’m a sloppy photographer. I’ve got eight more chairs cut, glued, and painted; now I just need to weave the seats and they will be done. Hopefully I’ll get them finished this week.

Bookcases

 Bookcases. Nice, aren’t they? Where else would you put a book? In my home, bookcases are not just a decorative item, they’re put to use. Every bedroom has a bookcase “for personal use”. There are bookcases in the office, the kitchen, the living room, and about 20 bookcases in the library. My official author bio isn’t kidding when it says I live with around 5,000 books. I can’t be more specific than that, because I only have about half of them cataloged. I have a lot of ebooks too, but they don’t take up nearly as much space to store, and are much easier to catalog.

Before I resume the cataloging, though, I need to finish my huge filing project – in between the time I spend on…making more books.

During this week, I released a new short story collection, Bits and Bites. More info on that is over on the “Other Books” tab at the top of the page. I also finally got back to working on my dollhouse project.

What’s my dollhouse project? It began initially with the intention of creating several photo sets which could be rearranged and decorated to make my website a photo interface. The first piece that was going to be made was a book shop with a flat above it. Designs were sketched, the walls constructed, and interior wall treatments begun. Then I realized that what I was building wasn’t going to suit my needs for the website, so that part of the idea was abandoned. However, I was having a lot of fun creating a dollhouse on a small budget, and decided to continue with it, just for fun. The bottom floor is a book store with a small office in the back, and the upper floor is a small flat with a kitchen, sitting room, and two bedrooms. The house is meant to be owned by a middle class person in a small town in rural Europe in the mid 1800’s – so the lack of indoor plumbing is deliberate in this “hundred year old building”.

At this point, I have the book store and office hardwood floor in. The book shop walls have wainscoting and a chair rail beneath a plastered surface, while the office walls are just plastered all the way up.

The next step is furniture. For a book store, that means bookcases. Lots of them. I’ve got four made so far. The picture at the top of the blog is of my book cases. The picture at the bottom is more zoomed out so you can see my computer behind them and get a sense of scale. Each bookcase is 2 1/4” wide, 4” tall, and 1/2” deep. Each of those books has been individually made, painted, and glued into the book case. I think I’m still going to need three more of them for the book shop, but this week I’m working on making chairs.